I started rock climbing, and I think you should too.
Rock climbing was something I thought I would never take up given my irrational fear of heights. But it has taught me some valuable lessons in life that I can carry with me for the rest of my life. To me, rock climbing has symbolized life, it has helped me grow as a person. So, here’s what I’ve learned from my hobby that will also help you through your life journey.
You are more capable than you think you are.
The beginner’s approach to climbing consists of doing the basics and keeping to the safer and well-attainable routes. Perhaps because of the fear of falling or it’s fear of not being good enough, people do not take the risks to make it to the top of the wall. But swallowing the little bit of fear and taking a leap means you found something in you that made it to the top.
In life, taking that leap of faith and swallowing the little bit of fear means you are more than what you think you are.
You need to let go to reach the next level.
In climbing, there will be a point in time you will not see the next hold to use to move up. No matter how far you plan ahead, there is something that will be unexpected. Something that could potentially bring you back down to the bottom. But, the next best move is to let go. Reach up, and trust your legs to do the rest. In life, when you ever reach rock bottom and you feel like there are no options, let go and trust yourself so that everything becomes clearer to you.
If you are a tad bit more confident, you can make even the hardest climbs possible.
On good days when you climb, you can send any route. But on the bad days, you make zero progress because you lose confidence in yourself. In life, confidence is just sweet icing on top of hard work and dedication and an ounce of confidence makes anyone able to do anything they want to. The sky’s the limit.
If you conserve your energy, that is success.
The key to climbing is to send routes without expending tons of energy. It isn’t about how fast you can make it to the top but how efficient you are in completing a climb. In life, some things are not worth expending energy on. Things happen that make us freak out to the point of no return and we feel like we lose control. But maybe we would be better thinking about if a situation in life is really worth spending the mental energy on and if so does it really change your life?
You can fall but it doesn’t mean that you’ve failed.
Climbers tell each other if you are not falling then you are not really making progress. Once you give into the fear of heights and falling do you really gain the ability to get back up and try again and again. You get scared to make questionable moves because you don’t want to fall, especially not in front of others. But getting up again is the hardest part of getting back at it so when you fall you’ll end up being that much more successful.
In life, sometimes the scariest thing is to get over yourself. You are the biggest detriment to your own success. Giving yourself space to make mistakes helps immensely to move forward.
Climbing has transformed from a hobby to a way of life that makes me realize that I really can do anything if I put my mind to it. Fears and self-beliefs are secondary to making dreams come true and I think climbing has really ingrained that philosophy in me. If you pick up rock climbing I hope you gain those same insights for yourself.
